TZIPI LIVNI: I MISS ARIEL SHARON

 

Here are just a few quotes from this “Prince of Peace” aka The butcher Sharon,  that Mz. Livni is mooing about.  There is a box of tissue to your left in case you empathize with the poor woman. These people never cease to amaze me.

Every time we do something you tell me America will do this and will do that…. I want to tell you something very clear. Don’t worry about American pressure on Israel. We, the Jewish people, control America, and the Americans know it." ~ Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, one Oct. 3, 2001, to Shimon Perez as reported on Kol Yisrael radio.  

Tell me, do the evil men of this world have a bad time? They hunt and catch whatever they feel like eating. They are not punished by heaven or bothered by indigestion. I want Israel to join that club. Maybe at long last the world will learn to fear us instead of feeling sorry. Maybe they will start to tremble, to fear our madness than admiring our nobility. Let them tremble. Let them call us a mad state.  

Let them understand that we are a savage country, dangerous to our surroundings, not normal. That we might go wild, start world war 3 just like that. Or that we might go crazy and burn all the oil fields in the Middle East. Even if you prove to me that the present war is a dirty immoral war, I don’t care. We shall start another war, kill and destroy more and more and do you know why it is worth it? Because it seems that this war has made us more unpopular among the uncivilized world.  We will hear no more of that nonsense about the unique Jewish morality. No more talk about a unique people being a light upon the nations and no more uniqueness and no more sweetness and light. Good riddance. ~ Ariel Sharon

It is the duty of Israeli leaders to explain to public opinion, clearly and courageously, a certain number of facts that are forgotten with time. The first of these is that there is no Zionism, colonialization, or Jewish State without the eviction of the Arabs and the expropriation of their lands. The plan is to kill or drive out the Palestinian people using poverty, hunger and war and so allow the Zionists to expand into ‘Greater Israel’. ~ Ariel Sharon, Israeli Foreign Minister, addressing a meeting of militants from the extreme right-wing Tsomet Party, Agence France Presse, November 15, 1998. 

Everybody has to move, run and grab as many (Palestinian) hilltops as they can to enlarge the (Jewish) settlements because everything we take now will stay ours...Everything we don't grab will go to them. ~ Ariel Sharon, Israeli Foreign Minister, addressing a meeting of the Tsomet Party, Agence France Presse, Nov. 15, 1998.

"We'll make a pastrami sandwich of them, ... we'll insert a strip of Jewish settlements in between the Palestinians, and then another strip of Jewish settlements right across the West Bank, so that in 25 years' time, neither the United Nations nor the United States, nobody, will be able to tear it apart." Ariel Sharon 

I don’t know something called international Principles. I vow that I will burn every Palestinian child (that) will be born in this area. The Palestinian woman and child are more dangerous than the man because the Palestinian child’s existence infers that generations will go on, but the man causes limited danger. I vow that if I was just an Israeli civilian and I met a Palestinian I would burn him and I would make him suffer before killing him. With one hit I’ve killed 750 Palestinians (In Rafah in 1956).I wanted to encourage my soldiers by raping Arabic girls as the Palestinian woman is but a slave for Jews, and we do whatever we want to her and nobody tells us what we shall do but we tell others what they shall do.” ~ Ariel Sharon, 1956, interview with General Ouze Herham.

Even today I am willing to volunteer to do the dirty work for Israel, to kill as many Arabs as necessary, to deport them, to expel and burn them, to have everyone hate us, to pull the rug from underneath the feet of the Diaspora Jews, so that they will be forced to run to us crying. Even if it means blowing up one or two synagogues here and there, I don’t care. ~ Ariel Sharon, Oz.Amos., 1983, Le Voix d’israel, Calmann-Levy, Paris. Translated by Guy Seniak. 

 

It seems Tzipi needs a "real man"

OP-ED: KADIMA’S TZIPI LIVNI SAYS

SHE LONGS FOR LEADERS 

WHO CARE ABOUT ISRAEL’S FUTURE

Arik Sharon sank into a coma six years ago. All of us followed it and prayed with hope as the ambulance disappeared into the hospital. When today I try to think about the essence of the public longing for Sharon, six years later, it appears that the longing for Arik has turned into longing for a prime minister who does not fear domestic politics and who sees the welfare of the nation of Israel before him when making decisions.

Arik proved that a leader does not have to fear the radicals in his party and does not have to fear a change in his positions when considering the welfare of the State and the Jewish people’s future.

I miss his palm, which would pound the table decisively, a gesture that implied “find a solution” when he was dissatisfied with operational plans presented by the army; the decisive pounding that implied “get to work” in the face of the bureaucracy; the decisive pounding implying “enough ~ no more!” in the face of politicians who attempted to resort to exploitation in order to get more. He always viewed these politicians cynically and humorously.

During my first steps in politics, I met him, a superb leader, at the home of a Likud activist. Arik opened his speech with a cynical, captivating smile. 

“I’m sorry,” he said,” I was busy in recent months and therefore I did not manage to attend all the weddings and bar mitzvahs you invited me to.” 

In that sentence I got to know the politics of the Likud Central Committee, but also Arik the person.

He cynically referred to the bunch of politicians who traveled from one city to another in the aims of getting elected as a “traveling circus.” 

“It would be good to approach politics with humor,” he told me, and I understood it later, on days where he sat alone in the Knesset cafeteria, observing small and large instances of treachery around him.

CARING ABOUT JEWISH PEOPLE

Two more political images of Sharon accompany me. The first one is seeing Arik at the Knesset plenum, restrained and incredibly focused on the words uttered by random speakers at the podium, knowing that his rivals, headed by Netanyahu, are sweating outside in an attempt to topple him. Yet Arik remained relaxed, as if it was another world that does not pertain to him.

The second image is of Arik leaving his office after dismissing Shas’ ministers with one gesture of leadership. This image repeated when he dismissed the National Union ministers who objected to the disengagement and proved that for a real leader, political considerations do not dictate policy, but rather, policy dictates political decisions; a prime minister who does not cave in to the caprices of sectarian parties.

When Arik Sharon thought that the haredi parties ~ his natural partners as they are known in Likud to this day ~ do not allow him to realize the policy needed for the country, he formed a government without them.

The Jewish issue was not sectarian at all for him. The Jewish people’s future bothered him. He made his decisions based on this concern. Jewish immigration was a value for him. 

“Bring another million immigrants,” he told me in our last one-on-one conversation, and embraced the new arrivals as if they were family.

I remember him always excited at the annual meeting at Sukkoth in his home with new immigrant combat soldiers; some of them were naturally non-Jewish and were in the midst of the conversion process. Arik would take pleasure in their combat service, and lament the difficult conversation process and the demand for strict adherence to the mitzvahs as a condition for conversation. “They would not be converting me either,” he said, “and nobody thinks I’m not Jewish enough.

And just as he took pleasure in the immigrants, he reprimanded those who did not make Aliyah yet. In every visit abroad he would urge any Jewish audience to move to Israel and lament the traveling Jew who does not cling to the Land of Israel’s soil.

During those visits abroad, he was able to enlist world leaders to the cause of Israel’s security needs. It wasn’t simple to gain their trust. World leaders were initially captive by his old image. Yet within a short period of time, without diplomatic manners, he gained that trust. 

“I’m a farmer,” he would say, “and when added “I mean what I said and I only say what I intend to do,” they believed him and knew it was true. To this day, in my meetings with leaders abroad, I discover that the longing for this direct leader still exists worldwide.

ESTABLISHING KADIMA

I saw Arik in the disengagement too, taking a dramatic decision against the camp that supported him based on the belief that avoiding a decision would harm Israel’s future and security. I saw him sustaining the fury of the settlers after making the decision.

Before the evacuation I initiated the meeting between the evacuees and the man who made the decision about their lives. No eye remained dry. I saw him showing concern for every detail, to the point of finding a place for the tractor of every farmer. This responsibility for the evacuees’ future, which I know Arik carried in his heart, is kept in my heart to this day.

Six years ago he fell ill, after managing to establish Kadima. In the decisive meeting on forming Kadima we were still members of Likud, while the radicals attempted to constrain the leader who made a diplomatic decision for the sake of Israel’s security and the Jewish people’s future; they constrained him to the point of not being able to coexist anymore. He made the decision, and Kadima was established.

The principles we attempted to convince Likud members to follow turned into Kadima’s platform. Some of us joined immediately, taking the personal political risk inherent in leaving deeply entrenched parties such as Likud and Labor; others hesitated and joined later.

It was clear to us back then, as it’s clear to us today more than ever before, that ideology is not a matter for radicals alone, and that realizing the Zionist dream of a Jewish and democratic state requires leadership that first asks what’s good for the State and for the Jewish people and only later asks what’s good for our coalition partners.

Just like we long for the deceive pounding on the table, I believe the public longs for leadership that takes decisions and assumes responsibility even when taking the toughest calls; leadership that always sees before it the future of Israel and the Jewish people rather than some public opinion poll. It took Sharon years to win the love of the people, and he won it precisely because he acted based on his beliefs and not in line with the public’s random mood.

Arik Sharon fell silent six years ago, yet his faith persists to this day, and he left it up to us to finish the job.